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The Michigan State University Center for Regional Food Systems (CRFS) works across local, national, and international spheres to support just, sustainable, and regionally integrated food systems. Since its founding in 2012, the Center for Regional Food Systems has employed a combination of applied research and outreach to advance collaborative, community partnerships on projects ranging from farm to table to food system policy. CRFS recognizes the power that cross-disciplinary cooperation and collective impact have in tackling complex social issues. Accordingly, the Center has positioned itself as a “backbone organization,” fostering a network of diverse perspectives in the pursuit of a common agenda: championing good, healthy, and affordable food.  

Candace Clark and Kandeaux Clark are collaborators, cofounders, and sisters-in-law. They forge connectivity throughout Chicagoland’s diaspora of BIPOC farmers, food artisans, and educators. Their fire is the internet.

Kandeaux is a wordsmith, activist farmer, policy wonk, and educator. Candace is systems, networks, codes, and innovation. They joined forces with fellow farmers of color—including Chicago urban hemp and viticulture legend Kenya Sample—to create a movement called Produce(n)Protest and a palette of digital power tools to make it all happen.

Produce(n)Protest asks the most weighted question in community food systems work today: how can activism intersect with agriculture to measurably upend the disparities entrenched in centuries of land-based institutional racism and economic injustice? 

The Wallace Center is a national nonprofit that bridges the gap between on-the-ground food systems practitioners and funders, public agencies, and experts in the field, the Wallace Center has been working as a support system and intermediary to create resilient local and regional food systems throughout the United States for almost 35 years. As a food systems leadership organization with a focus on advancing systems change, the Wallace Center is sharpening its focus on racial equity and anti-racism and is working to ensure that all of their initiatives and programs contribute to the dismantling of structural and systemic racism in the food system. Within the Wallace Center, there are two main focus areas: Food System Leadership Team and Resilient Agriculture and Ecosystems Team. The Food System Leadership Team develops and offers an accessible and varied suite of opportunities for food systems leaders to connect and strengthen their professional skills, technical knowledge, and organizational capacity.

Working at the sensitive crossroads where human dietary behaviors intersect with food security and food waste, you will find Virginia Tech PhD candidate Susan Chen knee-deep in research.

The questions she poses are simple yet daunting. Almost philosophical. "If a child sucks the juice from an orange slice," she asks, "but doesn't actually eat the orange, is that food waste? And—if it is—then how do we measure that?" Indeed, matters of orange-sucking vs orange-eating are at the root of myriad conversations among a wide range of food systems professionals: carbohydrates with and without fiber, consumer and producer waste, convenience and scratch cooking, just to name a few.